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 Learn How and How-Not to Deal with Opossums!
The opossum is the only marsupial in North America. This means the animal carries its young in a pouch, much the same as does the Australian kangaroo. Once a female opossum mates, she gives birth a mere 13 days later to a litter of roughly a dozen baby opossums that are each no bigger than a honeybee. These tiny, blind, and naked babies crawl on their own all the way to their mother’s pouch. There they each latch on to a teat from which they receive milk. They remain there for nearly three months.
- Opossums living in the attic
- Opossums living under deck or house
- Dead opossum on property or roadside
- Stealing pet food or bird seed
- Sick, potentially dangerous opossum
For the most part possums are a beneficial scavenger. Their feeding habits seem to keep them immune to most diseases. We try to release healthy animals whenever possible, but being a lover of horses has made me rethink releasing an excess of them. It’s been recently discovered that Opossums carry a disease called: Equine Protazoal Myeloencephalitis or (EPM). "Possum disease" is a neurological disease that is sometimes confused with equine encephalitis
Symptoms of EPM are lack of coordination, weakness and spastic behavior, lameness, airway abnormalities such as snoring, stumbling, or an uneven gait in the hind legs. Other signs include muscle atrophy or loss of condition, locking up of the stifle, or back soreness. The disease tends to affect one side or part of the horse more than another. The only way to know for certain that a horse has EPM is a blood test.
The organism is carried by certain birds or insects, which are then eaten by 'possums. The little critters grow in the 'possum's intestines and are deposited in the 'possum's droppings everywhere it goes -- including pastures and hay storage areas. When horses eat the infected feed, the EPM organism starts its migration to the spinal column, where it does most of its damage.
In the parts of the country occupied by opossums, anywhere from 50% to 80% of the older horses are infected with the EPM organism, but it is younger horses (one to five years old) that are most likely to show signs of the disease. The disease is not transmitted between infected horses. |
